Since my childhood growing up in rural Australia, I've stepped outside my comfort zone many times. Along the way I've learnt that only by risking failure can we create a truly rewarding life. I hope this column inspires you to do just that - daring to think bigger, to engage more courageously in conversation and to boldly pursue your greatest aspirations.

What's Keeping So Many Smart Women From Climbing the Ladder?

At face value, the numbers just don’t add up. Women graduate from college at a rate of 3 to 2 over men and make up almost half of our workforce. But according to two new surveys by nonprofit research group Catalyst, women fill just 16.6% of the Fortune 500’s board seats – a figure that has remained the same since 2004. These same companies employ an even smaller percentage of female executive officers – just 14.3% (with no growth at all over the past 3 years). And 2011 and 2012 Catalyst surveys show that 10% of the Fortune 500 companies have NO women on their boards. Not one!

This isn’t just disconcerting for women, it’s also an issue for men. We know that companies who have more women sitting at the decision making tables make better decisions that boost bottom line profitability. Indeed, a report by McKinsey (“A Business Case for Women”) found that the benefits of having more women seated at the decision-making tables are not only good for business, but it makes their business one more people want to work in.

Do Women Hold Themselves Back?

Clearly structural problems, institutional mind-sets, unconscious bias and life-style choices can be attributed to some of the failure of women to break through that proverbial “glass ceiling.” However, my experience working with women in middle to senior management roles has led me to believe that many women are still unwittingly holding themselves back, confining themselves to a “glass cage” through their own thinking. As Sheryl Sandberg put it in her controversial book “Lean In,” many women unknowingly “leave before they leave” by making career decisions based on future what-ifs rather than current potential.

After losing the Democratic nomination in 2008, Hillary Clinton said in her concession speech that “There are eighteen million cracks in the hardest of glass ceilings and the light is shining through.” From where I stand, the light is now streaming on through, despite the barriers women still face. Cracking that ceiling open once and for all will demand that women courageously challenge both the perspectives they bring into the workplace and the actions they are willing to take to grow their leadership ability in 3 key areas:

Courage: A willingness to step into difficult conversations with greater candor and boldness

Change #1: Embrace a Leadership Mindset

As I wrote in my latest book Stop Playing Safe, how we see ourselves determines how others see us. For more women to move into senior leadership roles, more women have to see themselves as capable of excelling in senior leadership roles.

Expanding our leadership vision will require challenging our leadership stereotypes. As Judy Rosener Ph.D. wrote recently in Forbes, it has long been assumed that “to be a leader is to be a male.” When I speak to groups of women and ask them to picture a leader in their mind, about two thirds of say they still think of a man. While it’s a generalization, women are more inclined to doubt themselves, underestimate their ability and second guess their decisions relative to than their male counterparts. While I’ve met numerous men whose egos have written checks their competence could not possibly cash, I’ve rarely met a woman guilty of an over-inflated sense of her ability. I have however, met countless women who underestimate their unique value and question their ability to accomplish on the grand scale they would like. Women have to think bigger to be bigger.

Change #2: Build Leadership Capacity

The higher we climb as a leader, the weightier the demands placed upon us. Add to that the pressure to “to do more with less,” the responsibilities of raising children (which still fall largely on the woman’s shoulders), and other commitments outside the workplace, and it explains why so many women feel like they are caught in a continual tug-of-war.

We must therefore become more intentional about doing those things inside our control so that we can respond better to those which aren’t. That means bolstering what I refer to in my book Stop Playing Safe as your ‘resilience baseline.’ Doing so enables us to respond with greater agility, flexibility and optimism when pressures mount.

At the core of capacity building is resilience, something that can be broken down to four core dimensions:

Women are naturally more attuned to the emotions of others, and are generally strong in many of the dimensions of emotional intelligence – the foremost predictor of leadership success. However, while we excel in creating connections, we are loathe to say anything that might damage them. This unfortunately keeps women from engaging in the conversations needed to build value, manage expectations, address contentious issues and expand their network of influence.

Three of the most important conversations women need to have more of are as follows:

a) Make bigger requests. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. A Harvard study of MBA grads found that 57% of males negotiated for more than the initial salary offer, while only 7% of women did. Don’t assume others are mind readers, and don’t think that working hard and collecting stars will pave your way up the ladder. If there’s something you want, ask for it. What’s to lose?

b) Speak candidly. Women tend to undermine their opinion with what Dr. Judith Baxter calls Double Voice Discourse, prefacing what they want to say with apologies and/or language that completely undermines their influence. As I wrote in Stop Playing Safe, “When you withhold your opinion, you limit your value.” Speak powerfully, not pathetically or passively. What you think matters.

c) Say No. Every time you say yes to something, it means, by default, saying no to something else. Be willing to say no, to be firm in your boundaries, and to let people know what you will, and won’t tolerate.

d) Toot your horn. Don’t kid yourself that if you work hard, and collect enough stars, you will be rewarded accordingly. Not true. Be proactive in letting decision makers know what you’ve accomplished, along with your aspirations for the future. The more people who know you are capable and ambitious, the better off you’ll be.

As more women raise their leadership sights and step through the “Do I have what it takes?” doubts, we will witness profound changes emanating from the top in business, government, and public life. Women like Marissa Mayer (Yahoo), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook) and Ginni Rometty (IBM) will have more women to keep them company, enabling them to bring the benefits of genuine diversity to the forefront.

Women make great leaders, and in today’s increasingly competitive and accelerated world, the attributes that women bring to leadership are more valuable than ever. From the women I know who have found their way to the other side of that glass ceiling, I am convinced that as more women ascend to the top rungs of power we will see that women will not be changed by that power, but will instead change the nature of it.

Margie Warrell is a leadership coach specializing in supporting women in leadership, media commentator, international keynote speaker and the bestselling author of Stop Playing Safe (Wiley 2013) and Find Your Courage (McGraw-Hill 2009). And last, but not least, she is the mother of four children.

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